Selection Sunday 2016: Kansas, North Carolina, Virginia and Oregon Are Top Seeds
Clockwise from top left: Kansas, North Carolina, Virginia and Oregon celebrated throughout the season. Credit Clockwise from top left, Charlie Riedel/A.P., Alex Brandon/A.P., Ryan M. Kelly/A.P., Ethan Miller/Getty Images
Kansas, the Big 12 tournament champion, was the top-ranked team over all in the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament field announced Sunday night. The other three top seeds in the 68-team field were the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament winner North Carolina, the Pacific-12 tournament champion Oregon and the A.C.C. runner-up Virginia.
Kansas (30-4) is in the tournament for the 27th consecutive year, tying the record set by North Carolina from 1975 to 2001. Kentucky, the Southeastern Conference champion, made the field for a record 55th time, while Cal State-Bakersfield, the Western Athletic Conference tournament winner, and Stony Brook, which captured the America East, will make their first appearances in the N.C.A.A. tournament.
Many observers were surprised to see Michigan State — which won the Big Ten tournament — drop to a No. 2 seed in favor of Virginia and Oregon, the champion of the lower-profile Pac-12.
And despite Kentucky’s win over Texas A&M in the Southeastern Conference championship game Sunday, the latter received a No. 3 seed while the Wildcats were seeded fourth in the East. Kentucky could play regular-season Big Ten champion Indiana in the round of 32, and No. 2 overall seed North Carolina in the round of 16.
“U.K. is misseeded,” the ESPN college basketball analyst Jay Bilas said Sunday night. He suggested that the typically young John Calipari squad, which has won its last five and is ranked eighth over all by KenPom.com, merited a No. 2 or No. 3 slot.
For several reasons, this could prove a strange year for the tournament. Unlike past seasons, when a few teams clearly stood above and apart from the field — or even last season, when undefeated Kentucky entered the tournament as an overwhelming favorite — there are several teams capable of winning it all this year, and even they are not as widely separated from the rest of the pack as usual.
In the regular season, 74 teams ranked in The Associated Press top 25 lost, setting a new record, according to ESPN Stats & Info.
Continue reading the main story Interactive Graphic 2016 Men’s N.C.A.A. Tournament Bracket Kansas, North Carolina, Virginia and Oregon are the top seeds in the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament.
OPEN Interactive Graphic
“Even in a year when everyone knows who the best team is, they’re only about 25 percent likely to win the tournament,” said Joel Sokol, a Georgia Tech engineering professor whose statistics formula is influential in the seeding process.
This year’s top team — last week, in Sokol’s numbers, it was Villanova — will have a “less likely” shot to win it all than that, he said.
Additionally, a high number of midmajor conference tournaments were won in upsets, with many teams taking places that had been expected to go to better-regarded rivals from their leagues. For instance, the automatic bids from the Patriot League (Holy Cross) and the Ohio Valley Conference (Austin Peay) were claimed by teams that entered their conference tournaments as No. 8 and No. 9 seeds.
While ordinarily top midmajor teams are ideal agents of upsets, the wacky conference tournament outcomes of the past week could complicate that trend.
Two teams ranked in the latest Associated Press top 25 poll, Louisville and Southern Methodist, are not competing in the N.C.A.A. tournament because of accusations of N.C.A.A. rules violations.
Fans of explosive N.B.A. offenses like that of Stephen Curry’s Golden State Warriors will be heartened by trends in the college game, which has witnessed a rise in “small,” shooting-heavy lineups and unprecedented attempts and accuracy from behind the 3-point line.
Thanks to several preseason rules changes, including a shot clock shortened from 35 to 30 seconds and foul rules intended to free up offenses, this season saw a significant rise in both scoring and possessions. As the regular season wound to a close, scoring in Division I was up from 73.1 points per game from 67.6, and per-team possessions were up to 70 from 65.8, according to the N.C.A.A.
The quickened pace of play did not extend to CBS’ two-hour selection show, in which the full bracket was not revealed for nearly 90 minutes. Less than an hour in, with CBS having filled in only two of the quadrants, the full bracket was leaked online.
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